106 | MAY/JUN 2017 | ISSUE 103and veterans without the typically bureaucratic and dogmatic rules
found in academia.
In 2011, Ocampo went a step further by founding the Department
of Avant-Garde Clichés (DAGC), a commercial art gallery. Located
along the gallery-lined street of Pasong Tamo in Makati City, Ocampo
sought to present art to a wider audience. Instead of peddling
expensive paintings to keep the gallery afloat, DAGC sold print
editions at low- and mid-range prices. In his three-pronged role
of artist, curator and gallerist, Ocampo has consistently displayed
a penchant for radical experimentation, all the while remaining
realistic about his status as an artist. As he explained: “I always seem
to pervert my function as an artist, thereby sabotaging my own work.
The result can be a mess, but I guess this is the way I can challenge
my own notion of what a painting is and keep it from being boring.”
Ocampo has made it clear in interviews over the years that he
did not decide to be an artist; rather, the profession was a calling.
He is a misfit whose ideals and interests are incompatible with
mainstream society. In his mind, being an artist is the closest one can
get to being free. As he put it, to be an artist, “all one needs are ideas
and [the desire] to express oneself.” When considering his medium of
choice early in his career, he simply chose paint for its accessibility
as well as its malleability. In the last couple of years, Ocampo
has turned his focus back solely to his painting and art practice.
In 2016, he mounted works at three important exhibitions in Manila:
“Brown Dada,” a group show at Vinyl on Vinyl Gallery, “Paintings
to Take Drugs to” at the Drawing Room, and “Los Desastres de
la Democracia” at Ateneo Art Gallery. Each exhibition featured
Ocampo’s most recent studies and themes in vastly different bodies
of work. The Vinyl on Vinyl show was partly inspired by Thomas
Zipp’s 2008 exhibition “White Dada” at London’s Alison Jacques
Gallery, which viewed Dada’s radicalism as a bygone trend in society.
Ocampo and others drew parallels between the milieu that gave
birth to Dada and the carnage of the present, ridiculing the seminal
movement as if to perpetuate its radical irreverence. The show was
expectedly anarchic, not only in terms of the brushwork and subjects
of Ocampo’s paintings but even in its unorthodox manner of display.
Some of the artists’ works were suspended in the air, while others
were touching the floor. In contrast, “Paintings to Take Drugs to”
responded directly to President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs—
which had claimed thousands of lives in the Philippines within six
months of his election victory—featuring black-and-white paintings
depicting ghostly figures and a host of references to drugs. Here,
Ocampo’s visual language remained enigmatic, though open to
political or allegorical readings. In Tremors (2016), a devil, surrounded
by skulls on the floor, plays a grand piano while a candelabra and a
dead swan-like figure rests on top of it. In Heroin Flashbacks (2016),
a man with a giant nose drags from a pipe and is surrounded by
flowers, African ornaments and a detached foot; the word “heroin,”
is painted prominently in the left portion of the canvas.
(Opposite page, top)
TREMORS, 2016, oil on canvas, 208 x 188 cm.
Courtesy the Drawing Room, Makati City.
(Opposite page, bottom left)
PHANTOM INSPIRATION (LA LEALTAD),
2016, acrylic on vellum, 126 x 89 cm. Courtesy
the artist and Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City.
(Opposite, bottom right)
ENTRAR Y CALLAR, PART 2, 2016, acrylic
on cartolina, 201 x 150 cm. Courtesy the artist
and Ateneo Art Gallery, Quezon City.Ocampo is fond of bombarding viewers with information, without
adhering to a linear sequence, and believes that painting can best
communicate this kind of anarchy. He refuses to settle on singular
meanings or scenarios, instead choosing to juxtapose signs, allowing
them to clash and occupy different contexts. He likens himself to
a vulture eating from the carcass of history, only to “shit out art,”
as he said during the artist talk for “Los Desastres de la Democracia.”
In that exhibition at Ateneo, created with Jigger Cruz, Ocampo
referenced Francisco Goya’s aquatint and etching print series
“Los Disparates” (1815–23), depicting strange and dark scenes as
well as Goya’s canvas Junta de la Reál Compañía de Filipinas (1815),
which commemorated the annual meeting of the Royal Company.
Ocampo and Cruz treated Goya’s works as the backbone for their
acerbic commentary on the current condition of the Philippines.
In the artists’ view, the follies that Goya critiqued two centuries ago
are still relevant today. They transformed the entire space to create
an immersive environment, meant to evoke the feeling of walking
inside a painting, filling the walls with canvases, the interstices
with cryptic doodles and Spanish profanities, and the open
spaces with installations. Though deeply provocative, their works
were received favorably. Ocampo transformed Goya’s Junta by
superimposing a tribesman, a mushroom cloud and details from
Picasso’s Guernica (1937) on the respective surfaces of the paintings
Dame Tu Dinero I (2016), Dame Tu Dinero II (2016) and Quitate La
Ropa y Callate (2016). Visitors saw a devil sodomizing the figure of
death in El Demonio Violando la Muerte (2016), a Templar cross with
a skull in the center in Phantom Inspiration (La Lealtad) (2016) and
various crosses, Stars of David and an Indian swastika in Entrar y
Callar, Part 2 (2016). Ocampo has always pushed boundaries, never
shying from the themes that have caused his works to be censored, but
instead has expanded on them. However, when asked how he would
prefer viewers to approach his works, Ocampo said that he hopes for
openness, an appreciation for irony and an active imagination, which
would pair well with the images on the canvases.
These days Ocampo leaves it to his artworks to tear up the art
scene in Manila. Many of his other projects have fallen off the
radar or become inactive. The Bastards haven’t exhibited together
in years, the Department of Avant-Garde Clichés is on an indefinite
hiatus and the Bureau of Artistic Rehab is no longer cutting-edge,
as more and more independent avenues for arts education spring up
in Asia. However, Ocampo was never interested in immortality. In a
similar sense, the artist hardly cares if his works will live on after
he’s gone. Although he has never offered any concrete reason as
to why he paints or why he started painting, his stubborn refusal to
compromise his vision is admirable. This attitude has opened up
multiple channels of artistic expression and continues to serve as a
beacon for other artists. In that sense, Manuel Ocampo has kicked
a dent in the art world deep enough to ensure his legacy as one of the
most influential characters in the Philippine art scene.